Thursday, February 24, 2011

Recently I found some old grade-school friends on Facebook. In briefly chatting about some school photos, one girl said to me, "I remember you! You had to go to the hospital that time with allergies or something. I was worried!"

Oh lordy.

That memory rather depressed me because it reminded me of what an annoying FREAK OF A CHILD I WAS! (No, I didn't just become annoying as I got older...)

This "hospital case" started out with a simple sneeze. We 8-year-olds were all coloring at the time. And I, obviously desperate for attention, decided to announce to everyone that I'd sneezed because I was allergic to the "Cornflower Blue" crayon in the crayon-box: "So, keep that crayon away from me!" Of course, everyone immediately dug that crayon out and stuck it under my nose. SNEEZE, SNEEZE, SNEEZE, SNEEZE, SNEEZE. "Stop! Stop!" SNEEZE, SNEEZE, SNEEZE.

Our teacher, understandably, got irritated with the commotion and told me I'd have to go out in the hall if I didn't quit it. Stubbornly: SNEEZE, SNEEZE, SNEEZE, SNEEZE. Out in the hall I went. SNEEZE, SNEEZE, SNEEZE, SNEEZE, SNEEZE, SNEEZE... Passersby stared. The teacher came out a time or two to give me more warnings. SNEEZE, etc. By this time, I'd sneezed myself right into a figurative corner. I, of course, wasn't allergic to the darn crayon. But I didn't know how to get myself out of the hall punishment without seemingly losing face before all of my classmates. (And a part of my antagonistic little brain was also thinking, re the teacher: "How does SHE know that I'm really not allergic? I could very well BE allergic!") SNEEZE x 50, x 100...

After god knows how long, the teacher finally got a little worried. (HA! See?) It was decided that I had to go to the hospital! (Whoops. Back down now and admit I was faking? Too late!) My mother was called; my teacher herself drove me to the hospital, Mom meeting us there... The nice young doctor promptly put a paper-bag over my nose and mouth and told me to breathe deeply... I wasn't quite sure what this technique was for, but I decided that now, upon "treatment," was my chance to be officially cured. I breathed and breathed, with just a tiny sneeze popping up every now and then, until finally, whew! A MIRACLE!

What was wrong, what was wrong??! The diagnosis: Hyperventilation. YES. A GREAT-sounding face-saving term that I could take back to school with me the next day. (It oddly satisfied all the grown-ups, too. No one looked at me askance. My teacher felt chastened for doubting me. Ha!)

But the fact remains: I MADE THE WHOLE THING UP! WHO DOES THAT?? :0 Luckily, I didn't go on to be one of those serial Munchausen Syndrome people! But, looking back, that's exactly what I was doing in that one case -- feigning a freakish illness for attention. (Ultimately, I think, the mental effort involved in faking such a thing for hours and hours, and the accompanying guilt at the deception, was way too strenuous to ever attempt again!)

(In a similar show of freakiness, around the same year, on the playground, I pretended that, when I pressed my ear to the ground, I could hear what The Devil was saying! Being a ringleader, I had 5 or 6 other little kids all stretched out on the ground trying to hear Satan! I did have a bit of grudging respect for one girl who was true to her religious self and said solemnly, "I don't think we should be doing this," and walked away. But at the same time, I also thought she was terribly stodgy! Looking back... WHO DOES THAT?? WHO THE HELL ACTS LIKE THEY'RE LISTENING TO SATAN ON THE PLAYGROUND?? :)

Hey, don't get me started on the "Flying Ants" in the kitchen when I was 6! :)

Monday, February 21, 2011

... than a former Catholic school-boy from Pottsville, PA, trying to act like he knows what kind of beer I like!

In this guy's (James Kilroy's) case: He initially posed in 2001 (yes, 2001 -- this has gone on for over 10 years) as an "intellectual," seemingly "outraged" at "Julie"'s treatment of me. The "intellectual outrage" soon turned into an ongoing stream of porno shots sent to me, and a series of hacking impersonations of legitimate people on my Joan message board. (I must apologize to Julie here: I thought up until now that this goofball was you!)

As it turned out, James Kilroy is a Putz from Pottsville, Pennsylvania, who graduated in 1984 from the Nativity Blessed Virgin Mary High School.

Want people to call you and write you, James? I'd be happy to oblige. Want your Comcast cable to cut you off? I'd be happy to oblige.

God, maybe 15 years ago, a friend of my brother's whom I'd known since he was a kid in Azle (and who subsequently moved to Austin) was hanging out with his mother (visiting from Azle) in an Austin bar that my brother worked at. We all were talking and talking the whole night. He and his mom invited me over to watch movies. In this case "watching movies" meant "watching movies"! One movie they'd rented earlier in the evening and had yet to watch until I came over was the Oscar-winning "Marty," with Ernest Borgnine, about a schlubby man who was torn between hanging out with his friends and being with the plain woman that he loved and who was in love with him (though the woman was not "hot" by his friends' standards, which was a dilemma for him).

"Marty" just came on TCM a few nights ago. After watching, I immediately thought of the pleasant evening with my brother's friend and wrote him via Facebook. He responded:

Oh yeah, that was nice. I remember we had a good time. Actually, I've always enjoyed hanging out and talking with you. You always have something interesting to say and you're never fake. Can't say that much in this city.

Hey I'm reading Patti Smith's book about her friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe in the late 60s to the late 70s in New York. Good book. You kind of remind me of her just in terms of how widely read she is with such a restless intellect. Called "Just Kids."

---------------------------------------------

I responded to him:

I haven't read Smith's book yet, though I saw several interviews with her about it months ago (on Charlie Rose, etc.). I was always afraid of women like her... I was raised so conservatively, I never wanted to APPEAR "weird" like she did, though I very much actually admired the life, the thinking... (I didn't mind BEING weird, just didn't want to APPEAR so!) :)

As with the slaves brought over from Africa, women's roots have also been nearly completely obliterated because tradition has insisted that they take on the names of their husbands (in effect erasing the woman's own roots).

In my case: My last name is Jones.My mother's last name is Lerche.Her mother's last name is Hoche. Her mother's last name is Osterroth.Her mother's last name is Kramer.Her mother's last name is ?. The maternal line dies out for me in the early 1800s. And even all of these women's last names is a given from their father. I have no real name. There's no way out of it.

African-Americans have made great efforts to reclaim their roots. Women of all races have not. For generations, women have been passively content to take on their husband's last names, in effect willingly erasing their own history. No one seems to see anything odd or completely psychotic about this. Women's roots have been as completely obliterated as slaves' roots. The only difference? Women have WILLINGLY given up their names and ancestry. (Don't think the slaves had much of a choice.)

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

When I walk down the back stairs of my apt. complex, I can look out into the alley and the backyards of houses from the next street over. A few days ago, I noticed a table lying in the alley. Austin only allows you to put out bulk items twice a year (rather than every week, like Weehawken), so this wasn't trash; I assumed that maybe someone had been moving and this fell off their truck or something, and they'd be back to get it later.

Today, on the way to the trusty beer store, I saw that the table was still there! I immediately speed-walked around the block to the alley (no short-cut through the fence; speed-walking because I was sure someone would come and grab it in the next 30 seconds if I didn't get there first) and tried to carry it home...I was able to walk about 10 steps before I had to put it down and rest. I did that maybe 3 times, then realized there was no way that was going to work. There are occasionally homeless guys-n-gals walking around the area, so I thought hopefully, "Maybe one'll show up right this second and I can give him my beer money to help carry this..." But did I really want a homeless guy knowing where my apartment was? (Not that one even showed up, despite my magical thinking.) So I did the next best thing: Ran home and called my mom. She's 70, with a nice car that this table probably wouldn't fit in, but... I HAD TO HAVE THIS TABLE!

Luckily she was game, and came RIGHT OVER before someone else could grab it! After much huffing and puffing, we managed to wedge it into her trunk and get it up my stairs. (I was nervous the whole time; even though it had been lying outside in an alley for 3 days, I still felt like I was somehow stealing it...)

I love this thing; nice, solid wood. For now kind of stuck in a corner with knick-knacks on it, but a good little kitchen table in the future... (Oh shit. I just thought of something. Last year I saw a reality show called "Hauntings" or something where a family picked up a piano off a curb (after reading a Craig's List ad offering it for free) and took it home... Within days, things in their house started going very, very wrong... When the show's psychics contacted the family who had initially gotten rid of it, they were reluctant to talk but finally admitted that it had given them the creeps and they just wanted it OUT of their house!)

Well, I guess I'll know soon enough if I have a haunted table! :) (Seems, though, that an 80-year-old piano is a much more evocative place for spirits to cling to than a circa-2002 table...)

I have several copyediting projects going on right now: a couple that pay well enough so that I don't get irritated if the writing's bad since, hey, I'm getting paid well enough to spend the time correcting the author's shit. And then there's the "other" project... the pay is a penny per word which, in cases of "normal" writing, would end up being a decent hourly wage. Except in this case.

What takes so long to copyedit here is the horribly convoluted writing that I often have to read two or three times to simply figure out the meaning of before I can even begin to figure out how to rewrite it. (I'm too drained by it to even copy and paste an example to show here.) As with life, when you're constantly slogging through shit, you start to doubt yourself: "Am I just an angry, irritated person? Or is this SHIT what's irritating me??" This murky stage might go on for a while, but in my experience there's almost always a clarifying moment when things get so outrageously bad that the lightbulb finally goes off: "It's not ME, it's YOU!"

In this case: The constantly incorrectly written prose was the angering, irritating murk. The outrageous, clarifying "YOU'RE CRAZY" moment(s):

(1) "In the 1940s, actress Greta Garbot insured her legs for $1 million."(2) "When the Twin Towers were hit in 2002... After the 2002 attack on the Twin Towers..."

The person that wrote the above got paid about triple what I get paid. He or she is allegedly an expert in the field, or wouldn't have been commissioned to write the text. And yet...

Let me address the most obvious first: 2002? Not once (perhaps an honest mistake), but TWICE?? Really?

As for the insuring of legs in the '40s:

First, the name "Garbo" (sans "t" at the end) is, or should be, common knowledge. Maybe not common knowledge for a 16-year-old high-school drop-out, but common knowledge, nonetheless, for any adult with even a smidgeon of general education. And especial knowledge for an author writing on the topic.

Second: Since when has Garbo ever been known for her legs? Garbo, in a "great-leg context," has never, EVER even been bandied about pop-culturally. (In actuality, in the '40s, both Betty Grable and Marlene Dietrich did indeed have their legs insured for large sums, which was widely reported in the general press at the time and passed along to legend today. Garbo, on the other hand, famously retired from films after 1941, still best known for her FACE.)

Thursday, February 10, 2011

While I was in the middle of my 12-hour-work-marathon today, I had CNN on in the background, eagerly awaiting news of what was almost promised to be Mubarak finally getting the hint and stepping down. The mounting Cairo crowds were jubilant; our CIA director Panetta was telling Congress the resignation was imminent... Hour after hour went by, and then finally the man showed up on his television station. This is how his speech began (text from the BBC):

"...I am proud of you as the new Egyptian generation calling for a change to the better, dreaming and making the future.

First and foremost, I am telling you that the blood of your martyrs and injured will not go in vain. I assure you that I will not relent in harshly punishing those responsible. I will hold those who persecuted our youth accountable with the maximum deterrent sentences.

I tell the families of those innocent victims that I suffered plenty for them, as much as they did. My heart was in pain because of what happened to them, as much as it pained their hearts.

I am telling you that heeding to your voice, your message and demands is an irretraceable commitment.

I am determined to live up to my promises with all firmness and honesty and I am totally determined to implement (them), without hesitation or reconsideration...."

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I'm sure I had an incredulous look on my face: Did he just say he was going to avenge the youth who had been killed? And that he heeded their call for change? Um... I'm pretty sure it was Mubarak who hired the thugs who beat and killed the anti-Mubarak protesters. And that the protesters' "call for change" was a call for MUBARAK TO RESIGN. I felt like I was crazy when I was listening to him, as I'm sure the protesters watching must have felt! (That's the problem with "crazy": Crazy people make YOU feel crazy! They're not usually lunatics waving their arms around with their eyes popping out; no, the ones who are really good at it are masters of double-speak, of seemingly saying something while not saying anything at all.)

Listening to Mubarak tonight actually made me mad: GET OUT, ALREADY, you nasty old bastard! You've got your billions of dollars that you've stolen from your country; you've got your 10 or so estates in various cities around the world; you're 82 years old and have had your 30 years of absolute tyranny. GET OUT. You've been asked relatively politely (nonviolently) by millions of your own citizens. What, are you waiting for them to storm your palace and string you up by your heels? Do you really want to go out like that?

Shallowly, since I have no stake at all in the matter, I've been "enjoying" the past 2 weeks of HARD NEWS coming out of Egypt. Finally, I can turn on a 24-hour news network and see actual, meaningful NEWS instead of interviews with the Kardashians and/or blandly-opining panels of intermarried/intereducated East Coast journalists. Again, listening to that kind of stuff constantly, I start to feel like I'M crazy! I'm NOT crazy! That the Kardashians are interviewed for an HOUR by Piers Morgan is crazy! The SAME EXACT opinion showing up in the New York Times and The New Yorker and New York magazine and The Huffington Post and on MSNBC is crazy!

Who knows how it will play out for the Egyptians. I've been impressed with the protesters' "sophistication," for want of a better word. They're not running around chanting "Death to the U.S.!" and "Death to Israel!" (as some Muslim revolutionaries have been known to do on occasion); most likely due, ironically, to the close ties they've had with America for the past 30 years under Mubarak. Lots of business and technology and student exchanges. The protesters aren't backwards/backwoods radicals but rather people who have had a taste of some modern perks like the Internet that have made them hungry for more openness, this time at home.

Watching the events on TV, I keep thinking about the "10 Days That Shook the World" of the Russian Revolution. This is serious, interesting, heady, scary stuff going on. Right now.

My wish for what would happen there in the immediate future? The military overtly takes the protesters' side and tells Mubarak to get out or they'll kill him. The guy's had his chance to retire with dignity. Maybe all he can understand are threats. My second historical preference: The protesters storm the palace and first offer Mubarak a plane ticket to Frankfurt, or wherever else his estates lie, and, if he refuses, kill him. Tsar Nicholas was never offered so much mercy. "Pharaoh Mubarak" has been offered mercy again and again. He needs to take what's offered before it's too late.

Wednesday, February 09, 2011

I think the video initially tries to re-create a feeling of starkness (working by lamplight late at night), but ultimately belies the true starkness of the song with The Darn Vest and Paul's bad emoting.

I think this has often been Paul's ongoing image problem: He is usually in actuality just as "deep" and creative as John, but presents himself in a more trivial, lackadaisical way, which reviewers/the general public pick up on. As a result, he doesn't get the critical acclaim that John gets.

When I was younger and first discovering The Beatles, I adored John and "John [as opposed to "Paul"] Songs." As I got older, I started to recognize more and more that Lennon was a bit of a poseur. His persona influenced how his songs, and how he as an artist, were perceived. If he said something serious, he was sure to point out how serious he was being. McCartney, on the other hand, wrote sad and serious and superficial and day-to-day and bombastic, without making any pronouncements about how we, the listeners, were supposed to receive.

This song, "Waterfalls," is from the "McCartney II" album, 1980 (pre-John's death). The whole album is electronic, stark, and experimental for McCartney; he played all instruments, did everything himself.

DON'T GO JUMPING WATERFALLSPLEASE KEEP TO THE LAKEPEOPLE WHO JUMP WATERFALLSSOMETIMES CAN MAKE MISTAKES

I thought this song was the sexiest thing in 1984, when I was 19. At 45, I still like it a lot and appreciate its sweetness. The Beatles, to me, always gave off the most positive of vibes. Post-Beatles, Paul and John did, also. Even when writing about difficult things.

Friday, February 04, 2011

CNN's Anderson Cooper, with his "Ridiculist" and increasing focus on celebrity interviews, was on the brink of (seemingly intentionally) becoming the next Andy Cohen.

Thanks to the revolution in Egypt, Cooper seems to have again found his hard-core news roots (as has, to a lesser extent, Brian Williams of NBC, et al).

Katrina and Haiti didn't count -- It doesn't take either guts or journalistic ability to wade around in the aftermath of a natural disaster in a form-fitting black T-shirt, posing for the cameras. It does, however, take a lot of both to insert yourself into the midst of an explosive revolutionary crowd and report back from an undisclosed location with gunshots and governmental repression hindering you.

Thursday, February 03, 2011

These are "Me, Happy" pictures! The very first day this winter when I could dig out my "Winter Shoes" and "Hats/Scarves/Gloves" boxes from the top of my closet! I think the high today in Austin was 27 or something. Yes! With snow expected overnight!

I was seriously excited about getting to wear my nice NYC coat and boots, and my old scarf and hat and lined gloves, again. Went briskly marching around the streets, leering at the shivering wimps I saw. (Not that there were many "shivering wimps" out to see... tha wimps were mainly all indoors!) I walked for over an hour, all the way to the old graveyard that I used to visit occasionally back when I had my nearby rental house (2000-2007). There's nothing like a graveyard in winter.

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

This is an early take on the theme, from 1898; his final version was done circa 1907. (All later destroyed by the Nazis in 1945, with just photos remaining.)

And then a detail -- "Hygeia" -- from the 1907 painting. It's interesting to see how Klimt had finally become "Klimt"... He has to be my absolute favorite painter. (I was lucky to get to see a rare exhibition of his work -- including a replica of his work-space -- at the Neue Gallerie in NYC, back in November 2007.) He has the lush sensuality of Waterhouse (whom I like very much), for instance, but is able to combine that surface lushness with dozens of other "things" going on -- psychologically (Freud coming into vogue at the time), symbolically, texturally (not "textually," but, rather, the TEXTURES of his paintings in his heyday are insanely creative and innovative). I'm completely stimulated -- mind, body, soul -- when looking at his paintings. (Which reminds me... A few years ago, a co-worker that I had a crush on -- sophisticated, an art lover -- actually told me she didn't that much care for Klimt: "All that [makes a face and manic hand-gestures] going on!" Wow! To me, all that [...] is The Complete: Lush Ordered Chaos!

[Dang... I thought that the "My Life as a Blog" title was so clever, but then I did a search -- everybody's using it! Including one guy who went on and on in his sole post of 2011 about "When Did Angelina Jolie Become Angelina Jolie?" Duh, Dude: "Gia." Can you please stop trying to post now?]

In "This Woman Is Dangerous" news:

Monday I woke up around 1 pm with a huge hangover, no clean clothes, only soup in The Room, under five cigarettes, and a big work project to start with a too-fast turn-around time that made me nervous.

As soon as I opened my eyes and saw how late it already was, and knowing how much I had to do (esp. GET CIGS!), I initially groaned and thought about just making it a "hangover day," i.e., lying in bed for 12 hours watching TV and using the hangover as an excuse for not "feeling like" doing anything at all. Then I saw the weather report -- starting Tuesday, it was going to be nasty for the rest of the week. Did I want to walk for miles carrying groceries and stand for a half-hour at the bus-stop in 30-degree weather? No, I did not. Up, up -- don't be ashamed of putting on those unwashed jeans wrinkled-fresh from the laundry bag -- while the grocery-getting days are still warm!

After shopping, I was standing for a very long time at the bus-stop. At nearly the half-hour mark, a young Hispanic guy showed up. We nodded hello, and after a few minutes, he asked how long I'd been waiting, etc. I was wary and monosyllabic. (Honestly, nearly everyone in Austin who strikes up a conversation at the stop or on the bus is weird in some way. I rarely hear anything but stories of evictions and drugs and burglaries and druggie neighbors burgling and former drug addicts finding God and now wanting to be lawyers or something equally impossible or else hating all rich people. Usually ending with an insistence on a handshake, which I acquiesce to because I don't want to seem like a snotty white woman who's too good to shake their god-knows-what-they've-been-digging-through hands. In New York, I only once had a homeless guy shake my hand -- after which the work-friend from Queens that I was standing with at the bus-stop immediately/automatically/sympathetically gave me a hand-sanitizing wipe. Thank you! New Yorkers aren't afraid to be overtly ANTI "down home" and utterly SANE!)

After a few more minutes, my wannabe bus friend tried again:

[Which of the two buses that stopped there was I waiting for?] [inward sigh] Either one.

Either one? Yeah, they both take me back to the same place.

I like ___ better because it's usually less crowded. But since it's less busy, it doesn't come as often.Yeah.

I was just at the tax office. It took me two hours to get up there. Have you ever had to go there on a bus? It's a pain. And now THIS bus is late.No. Where is it? Way up north? I don't usually go anywhere but my hairdresser's by campus and this grocery store. I don't know why this bus is so late. Oh, and Marshall's.

You like Marshall's? They have some really great deals there! I just bought my wife a sweatshirt there -- you know the kind with a zipper in front, and a hood? -- for only $9.I know! I got a $100 gift card there for Christmas, and I was able to buy 4 pairs of pants, some socks, AND a pillow! All for $100!

-------------------------------------------------------

Well, after that, we were off to the races! :) I think as soon as he mentioned both his wife and Marshall's, I relaxed -- he was just being friendly and wasn't a weirdo trying to pick me up. (And it was cute to me that he was married so young and that he took pleasure in getting a good deal on a sweatshirt -- you know, the kind with a zipper -- for his wife.) So, for the next 15 or 20 minutes until the bus came, we chattered away.

For one thing, we had both moved back to Austin in the past year and weren't readjusting 100%. I was missing the beauty and energy of New York, while he was missing the more laid-back vibe of Guadalajara, where he'd also moved just to do something different and interesting. (Funny, but he thought Austin was not laid-back enough! He also thought the weather in Austin was too...cold!) I had to come back because of no job; he came back because the crime there was starting to get too serious. Both of us liked the public transportation systems of our previous cities very much, and both of us now very much missed our cars, which we'd sold when we went off on our adventures. He'd also lived in NYC for a few months several years ago with a friend -- where he'd liked clubbing, but did not like the weather and the crowds.

Once the bus finally came, there wasn't room for us to sit together, so we just waved (NOTE: "waved," not "shook hands") 'bye when I got off. But the whole conversation put me in a really good mood. It was fun to be able to talk to/hear the thoughts of a real person instead of leaving messages on a computer! Seriously -- I'll maybe talk to a family member once every two or three weeks. During the week, I'll say hi to the beer-store guys or to neighbors that I pass by the mailbox. But other than that, I haven't really had much human interaction since moving back to Austin. (I have been invited out a few times, but have usually been feeling too sluggish to do anything "structured" -- meaning, I guess, having PLANS to meet and interact as opposed to just running into someone at a bus-stop!) :)

Anyway, a peppy start to a peppy rest-of-the-day. (Once home, did every last bit of warsh -- including the bedding, which is always a pain; and started marinading the chicken breasts that I'd just bought -- I always hate touching raw meat of any kind and have sometimes let what I've bought go bad because I didn't ever feel like handling it. Oh yeah -- and got a good start on the work project, which I'm not nervous about any more.)

It might also be a peppy month, work-wise, at least. (When I have the promise of work/money coming in, that usually puts me in a correspondingly more positive mood. I like having something "real" to do for part of the day and THEN being able to relax with a few beers. As opposed to waking up with nothing to do BUT "relax" and drink.)